


The Feather

by soy_em



Series: 12 days of Wincestmas 2016 [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Post-Episode: s12e08 LOTUS, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 16:12:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9332903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soy_em/pseuds/soy_em
Summary: How Sam and Dean escape supermax;ORSam never needed the feather to fly.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [random_firework](https://archiveofourown.org/users/random_firework/gifts).



> Last part of 12 Days of Wincestmas 2016!
> 
> Thank you to random_firework for being such a lovely giftee!

It starts small. Sam has all the time in the world to experiment, after all. Long days without human contact, broken only by his hour long trudge through the yard with unsmiling guards.

The cell brings back deeply unpleasant memories, of course. About 3 days in, Sam starts laughing and can’t stop, when he thinks of just how many memories it provokes. Hell - of course. The English bitch earlier this year (Sam spends quite a lot of his time side-eying the shower in his cell, he doesn’t like showers much any more). The idiot Cole holding him as bait back when Dean had the Mark. These memories, of torture by strangers, are all par for the course, really. 

Other memories are more insidious, more conflicted. He and Dean huddled in a closet in a rental house when he was 10, hiding until Dad killed a monster that had tracked them down. Waiting in the holding cell for Victor Heinrikson to send them to Supermax, way back when. Locked in the office screaming at Dean to leave, when he thought the Croatoan virus would claim him too. 

Dean and Bobby locking him in the panic room room to detox.

Of course, above everything else, worse than all the memories combined, there is his worry about Dean - and his crushing loneliness, his desperation to see his brother. 

So he starts thinking about other things to distract himself. He cycles through recent hunts, analysing them to find improvements and reviewing everything new he’d learnt. That’s how he gets back to Magda and her powers. 

And his powers.

He’s always pushed down thoughts of whether he can still access his abilities. He’s never wanted to think about them, linked as they are to Azazel, Ruby and Dean’s trip to Hell. But now, he’s trapped in Supermax. So maybe, psychic powers might come in useful. 

So he starts small. 

It takes him a while to find that space in his mind again, the tiny little seed of power that it all springs from. He’s spent the last 7 years trying to push it down so ruthlessly that’s it’s almost gone for good. 

But once he does find it again, it’s easily accessible every time he tries. 

He starts with moving the corner of hs blanket. It takes him two full days and he almost gives up - but the blinding boredom, the loneliness and the panic at the edge of his vision keep him going. 

What he doesn’t expect is how exhausting it is to practice. But that’s ok, he’s got plenty of time to sleep it off. And it’s reassuring, reminding him that this time is different, this time he’s not unnaturally juiced up on demon blood.

Once he can move the blanket - well. He’s quickly able to get his spoon rattling on his plate, then his plate tipping on his bed. Then he can move his spoon to his mouth - using his hands to shield his movements from the ever-watchful cameras. Then, he can make his toilet seat rise up by himself and cover himself with his blanket at night. 

Once he’s got the initial process clear in his mind, he starts racing along. It’s still exhausting, but he can see that what Ruby said was true - it was in him all along. He never needed the feather to fly. 

So he starts thinking bigger. 

He’s not sure how long he’s been in jail now, but he has to assume no help is coming. It’s on him to rescue Dean. This thought provides enormous motivation - his world without Dean is dull and monochrome, full of a monotonous, pounding pain and barely worth the effort. (This isn’t news - he’s felt this way every time they’ve been parted - but the reminder is deeply unwelcome.) 

So he starts sending his consciousness outside the cell. He finds that if he can focus on the wires, he can follow the locking mechanism back to the power source, and in theory, open the door. And from that, it’s an easy jump to doing the same thing with the CCTV system. 

He’s afraid to mess with the locking system, so he uses the CCTV to practice - he knows that the guards will put it down to a momentary glitch in the system and he’s careful not to do it too often. He’s soon able to turn it on and off at will and hopes that the locks will be the same. He starts to pay a lot more attention to the rhythms of the prison, watching when guards come by and using his father’s training to make careful note of the timings. 

Once he’s got that secure in his head, he settles on an escape plan. 

***

Dean is utterly astounded when his door clicks open and Sam walks in. Their hug is full-bodied, desperate, intense - everything Sam has dreamed of for the last however many weeks (six and a half, a quick look at Dean’s wall tells him, jesus). He’s forced to pull away long before he’s ready, tugging on Dean’s arm to remind him that they need to leave. 

“Come on De, don’t have long.”

“What - how?” Dean is, unusually, shocked into inaction. It takes him a minute, but then, “You know what, never mind.” Sam is glad that his brother’s mind seems to have rebooted, and he hurries them out. 

If Dean had been astonished when Sam walked into his cell, it has nothing on his face when the external door clicks open in front of them. Sam can’t help but feel a little smug - he is a little brother rescuing his big brother, after all - but he knows that the argument when Dean works out what’s happening is going to be immense. 

He pushes his worries aside. For now, he’s breathing free air, he has his brother by his side again, and that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my [Tumblr](http://soy-em.tumblr.com/).


End file.
